


Piston

by Dartz (The_Fenspace_Collective)



Category: Fandom-Fandom, Fenspace
Genre: Fenspace - Freeform, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fenspace_Collective/pseuds/Dartz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life has its ups and downs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piston

Daryl felt herself smiling as she looked at the new name under the cockpit of the Kulbit prototype. It was a giddy rush rolling through her body, fizzing through the tips of her fingers. She closed her eyes and danced in the memory for a moment, falling back into that feeling.  
  
She thought of a rather stupid joke she was certain he’d make once he found out that she’d named the plane after him.  
  
And went stone-cold inside. Stand on a ladder beside a prototype race-jet, alone inside a launch bay nearly a kilometre long, filled with dead still air, and the rusting scent of old steel, dry stone and hot oil.  
  
Reflected in the transparent carbon canopy was a face, aged 4 years. She hadn’t realised how much difference 4 years would make until she saw it reflected back at her in the cockpit glass.  
  
She’d screamed in rage and fury and frustration at being held back from taking revenge against the people who’d torn away the teenage romance she’d spent her high-school years being told was the ideal for a sailor-suited ‘magical’ girl. She’d simmered in a hardsuit for two years waiting to slip out and strike back in a blaze of anger and bring righteous justice in the name of love down on the heads of those responsible. And when she’d taken her chance with a borrowed hardsuit and was standing ready to murder the man responsible - she’d stepped back from that precipice and done the right thing inspite of it hurting somewhere deep inside in a way she never could explain to herself.  
  
Now, all that was left was the self-indulgence of a wounded teenager still trying to cling onto the echoes of feelings, like little more than the warmth left behind in a vacated rack.  
  
It was a teenaged infatuation that’d lasted 2 years longer than it probably should have. And now the memory of it was the asteroid that was holding her back.  
  
4 years on top of 19 was a big change. It was the shift to adulthood. It was a step beyond the blaze of youth into a smouldering adulthood.  
  
“Time to grow up,” she said.  
  
It took five minutes to pull the uncured decals off, leaving faint glue-stains on the lacquer coating. She stopped when she got to the little cartoon, grinning madly at her with stubby little arms, a zig-zag fuzz of brown hair and crazy-huge eyes. A smoking gun and a tuxedo-jacket with tac-vest completed the illustration..  
  
It was enough to remember what was important. Without being self-indulgent.  
  
The composite fuselage was warm under her fingers, the last tacky remains of the glue tugging at the tips. An electric tingle trickled down her arm, prickling through before racing out into the spacecraft’s frame. It felt strangely like a weight leaving her shoulders.  
  
She was aware of the door opening in the distance, before it slammed shut again. She could hear the steel feet walking towards her while she attacked the remaining glue stains with neat alcohol and a scraper.  
  
“You see what Ben posted about his test flight on his blog?”  
  
She left the alcohol bottle standing on the canopy.  
  
There was an almost gleeful grin on Jet’s face.  
  
Daryl felt herself smirk in response. She still remembered how funny that day had been. “What?”  
  
Jet was just grinning, obviously reading it again for her own benefit. “He loved the plane. Hated the flight suit. And was three seconds a lap slower trying it with a regular flight suit.. ”  
  
It was, Daryl thought, deeply funny to see the skintight-flightsuit trope being played fairly for once. After nearly an hour fighting to get into it and get everything hooked up right, that one photograph of an obviously uncomfortable Benjamin Rhodes had gone viral across the interwave.  
  
“It’s a pain. But at least that proves what we’ve been saying all along.” Jet was having a hard time hiding the smug note in her voice.  
  
“They should know I’ve more self respect than to wear something like that, just for the attention. But Suruwatari team ruined it for everyone.”  
  
“Well, if you can’t get results.....” Jet shrugged, before noticing the scraper and alcohol bottle left standing on the canopy top. “Changing the name?”  
  
“Oh.” She caught herself, buying a precious moment to put the lie together. “We missed the deadline to register the name, so I’m just going with the sticker. It’s more tasteful anyway.”  
  
She decided the best way to keep Jet from calling her out on the lie, was to just plain not give her the opportunity.  
  
“So, you had any final thoughts on the proposal.”  
  
The cyber’s expression darkened. “You know how I feel about it....”  
  
“This place is dying slow and you know it. “Daryl took a deep breath, her eyes scanning around the vast landing bay they both stood in. It size was a silent witness testifying to the truth of that statement.  
  
“It’s not that. I just can’t...” There was a moment where Jet’s mouth clearly outran her mind. “….don’t feel like I’ll fit in.”  
  
Daryl found herself wondering for a moment just what the cyber had been about to say.  
  
“Well, the Millenium isn’t only made up of Sailor Scout wannabees,” she assured her. “And those weirdos are too busy bothering A.C. to come out here.”   
  
“Unless Anika makes good on her threat.... then they’ll bloody kill me.” The look of worry on Jet’s face was genuine. “I’ll never stop being glad that I only appeal to a niche.”  
  
“It’s the best thing for Frigga, Jet.”  
  
“I’m not sure it’s the best thing for me,” answered Jet. “But if that’s what people vote for, I won’t stop it.”  
  
Daryl grinned at her. “You say that like you have a choice.”  
  
Jet paused. Daryl could see the cheer drain out of her expression.  
  
“You’re right,” said Jet softly. “I don’t. I just came down to let you know Ben posted his blog. I’ll be in Blitzkrieg for the next few hours if you need me. Then I’ll do the publicity pictures I’ve been meaning to.”  
  
“Yeah sure. I’ll be finished here in a few minutes anyway.”  
  
Daryl found herself wondering what had hit Jet so hard. It was more like she’d just been told a relative died or something. Daryl doubted she was sulking.  
  
Whatever it was, there wasn’t much she could do about it herself.  
  
Instead, she place her hand on the cartoon sticker and smiled. Something about it felt like an achievement in waiting, like the final few footsteps of a marathon with the finish line in sight. Victory might not have been certain, but success was tantalisingly within reach whatever happened.  
  
She held a little private celebration for herself on top of the mobile staircase.  
  
Until she remembered Kotono expected her to run another 5 kilometres in an hour’s time. Followed by weight training. The Fitness Instructor was enjoying her new position as head of pilot torture a little bit too much.  
  
\------  
  
There was peace in combat, Jet found. It calmed the mind wonderfully, focusing her thoughts into the moment. There was no waste, there was no noise, just herself and her opponent. A part of Jet’s mind sat back, quietly analysing her opponents performance, reading his movements and momentum, keeping just a heartbeat ahead of him.  
  
The entirety of her being was focused on this one single task. The Kunst cleared the stormclouds from her mind and let her feel free and in control. Mind and body operated in harmony, data streaming through her mind and out through her very fingertips.  
  
There was satisfaction in being skilled - in the self mastery required. She thought she might be happy doing nothing else for the rest of her life - but that’d get stale quickly. And it wouldn’t near cover the maintenance she needed.  
  
It was a strange paradox. A body which gave her so much freedom, was strange sort of prison.  
  
Contact came exactly where she’d expected it - hard enough to break a rib if she’d been human. The blunt training blade sent a shock up through her armour that made her smile with satisfaction.  
  
In the moment, she knew this was what she truly wanted to do for the rest of her life.  
  
“Punkt,”   
  
The claim burst into her mind through her comm’s, her opponents surprise still clear despite the synthesisation of the voice.  
  
“Kassierten,” she conceded.  
  
A good instructor provides a challenge for their students, but one they were always be capable of surmounting. It was what Max had always called a leading challenge - something always just within reach of the student to encourage them to keep stepping forward.  
  
She lowered her guard, her student doing the same a moment later. His visor popped open, revealing bright eyes and a broad grin. The power drained from his body as he relaxed, electroconstrictive carbon actuators sighing beneath muscle-aping armour as he smoothly switched to a resting posture.  
  
Jen Maya - formerly American - and now one of Tsu-Ann’s latest achievements. He was a Kojima -type - Carbon fibre structure, Muscle-imitating actuators, and a body-style that might’ve made her reconsider a few choices in personal appearance. Tsu-Ann’s new Kojima’s were one of the few male bodytypes that actually looked good, without being Terminator parodies.  
  
He bowed his head, placing a closed fist where his heart should’ve been, keeping blade-edge to the ground.  
  
“Meister. Es ist eine Ehre, unterwiesen werden”  
  
Jet popped her visor open, returning the salute with a smile.  
  
“Meine Ehre ist Ihre Fähigkeit, Lehrling.” They both relaxed, bodies slipping back under control. She inhaled a deep breath, locking her own mental safeties back into place. Training was over for the day.  
  
“That’s great work Jen, you made it count the first time you got your chance, but you’re still a little slow on your transitions between forms.”  
  
He offered a shy smile. “I’ve got all these expert systems floating around in my mind. Sometimes it gets a little noisy, if you know what I mean? It’s still distracting.”  
  
“I know the feeling,” she answered. “You human mind is still merging with the digital hardware. You’re growing into something new. Within a few months, you won’t even be able to tell the difference, it’ll all feel natural and normal.”  
  
Her voice carried the weight of certain experience.  
  
He stood there on the training floor, slowly deflating. His eyes were drawn to his shadow, projected onto the wood-panelled walls by a low sun streaming in through the windows overhead. It was slowly shrinking down off the wall.  
  
He looked up at her for a moment, then at his own carbon-fibre fingers. “I guess it’s just change. I’m moving further away from human. Even the things that seem normal now, were a nightmare.”  
  
“That’s alright,” Jet reassured him, a sympathetic look on her face. She took a few steps to close the distance. “You want to talk about it?.”  
  
He gripped his hand tightly shut - tight enough to crush stone if he’d intended. “I think, I miss missing something. Strange as that may sound. That’s what’s frightening. I used to feel like, on some level, part of me was always screaming at the horror of all this. It was all some sort of waking nightmare. Now that this almost feels normal....”   
  
”That’s normal. That’s a good sign. You’re starting to adapt to the artificial side of yourself. Your mind’s natural rhythms are merging with the digital signalling of your augmentations to become one whole cybernetic organism. You’re starting truly grow into something other than human.”  
  
He gave her a sidelong glance, unable to match her enthusiasm. “And if I’m going beyond human? Will I still be able to relate to humanity.”  
  
The eyes hoped for an answer like a thirsty man hoping for water. It was a strange relief for Jet - she’d answered a similar question a dozen times or more.  
  
“Not so long as you don’t let yourself get isolated from humanity.” She offered him a soft smile, proving why she’d chosen to keep this face. “It’s about making people a little more comfortable around you. You need to have contact with more people.” She took her hand off his shoulder, and cupped her metal breast with it. “This was my solution,”  
  
Jen couldn’t help but smile at her. “Right, right. You started out male, right?”  
  
“It was a quirk that helped humanise me to people. I kept it for so long that I sort of changed to fit.” That was a lie, but it was easier than the truth. “If you’re worried about losing humanity, or the ability to relate to ordinary people, the best thing you can do for yourself is keep in touch with people. Don’t isolate yourself.”  
  
He took a few moments to scan the room - formerly used as a dance-hall. “Kinda hard out here, though.”  
  
The silence that followed just added a full stop the that statement.  
  
A permanent population of five in a town built for five hundred had that effect. The sun set, stage-lights flickering up to full power. They buzzed at a steady sixty hertz.  
  
She looked up at it, software tools automatically modulating her vision to smooth out the flickering.  
  
“You’re right. It is.”  
  
The weight of teratons of iron, ruthenium, yttrium and palladium hung from her shoulders.  
  
\--------  
  
There was still a scar on the tunnel wall where the Griffon had hit. The concrete lining had crumbled, the steel lining underneath warped and melted by the heat of the fire. Corrosion had begun to bite. The bare wall was still scorched black.  
  
Daryl thought she could trace out the entire crash just by studying the marks on the ground. A few shards still remained at the tunnel edge where the cleanup had missed.  
  
It helped her ignore the discomfort anyway  
  
She was hot. She was sweating. Her legs ached. Her muscles burned. She’d throw up her lunch if she stopped running. She swallowed a mouthful of fruit-flavoured tonic to try force it down. It felt like it was curdling.  
  
Tight shorts and a sports-bra were supposed to wick away sweat, but if they were doing any good she sure couldn’t feel it.  
  
“I can’t believe you’re charging us for this.”  
  
“This is my profession,” Kotono declared proudly  
  
“But we’re friends,”  
  
“Yes, but this is business. I’m working as a professional personal trainer for Asagiri.”  
  
“Blood sucker,” groused Daryl  
  
Kotono smirked at her. “Well, you could always add my new gym as a sponsor when you race,”  
  
“Oh, a new Gym?”  
  
“Well, since the Millennium's coming, it seems like a good idea.”  
  
They ran on, passing an intersection. A sealed off passage led down to a dark pit full of abandoned junk, steadily rusting. They knew the wreckage of the Griffon lived down there.  
  
“Daryl?”  
  
“Yeah”  
  
“Is it just me, or do you look a little.... bigger.... up top?”  
  
“Things have been getting tight.” She adjusted her top a little. “I thought it was the diet change.”  
  
“No,”the trainer shook her head..”If anything you should be burning fat.”  
  
“Hey What?”  
  
“I really don’t know what’s doing that. Some people’s bodies just react different, I think.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
“Or, you’ve been biomodded without realising it.”  
  
Daryl swallowed. “Shee-it,”  
  
She thought on it.  
  
“No. It can’t be. My last blood test came up clear. Only background levels.”  
  
“When was that?”  
  
“Three days ago. I noticed the tightness long before that.”  
  
“Anything else change?”  
  
“Well, I’ve been doing test flights in the proto....type.”  
  
She trailed off as the realisation struck home.  
  
“I think it’s got a quirk,” Kotono giggled impishly at her.  
  
“I don’t think it’s the prototype,” said Daryl, flatly.  
  
“Then what?”  
  
“The flight suit! They were always tingling when I took it off.”  
  
“Didn’t Mackie design it?”  
  
Kotono’s grin broadened.  
  
“He just named it. We were trying to focus to loads away from the softer parts. Not that you’d know how much a standard 5-point harness can hurt.”  
  
“Oh shut up!”  
  
“So,” she breathed “How long?”  
  
“Another two kilometres. Then we’re onto the weights.”  
  
All to win a race.  
  
\---------  
  
Ford wasn’t quite sure why she was thinking about the time she told her mom she was dropping out of high school, but that was all she could think off. Or maybe the time she’d told her mom she was planning to move out.  
  
Come to think of it, she’d made a habit of breaking to others big life decisions like a bolt from the blue. She’d actually been thinking about it privately for at least six months.  
  
It’d started as a sideline, a consequence of saving a few credits on the Steyr rifles Survival Shot had bought by not going back through the manufacturer for maintenance. The Caster Guns started as a joke, given form by the need to pay back those who’d helped the Knight Sabers with something special. The money that grew from them was enough to pay for some interesting things, but didn’t earn her much of a name. The Cosmo Guns that followed were great name-getters, but nothing more.  
  
It was the FR-15 rifle and Survival-Shot’s tactical gear, that was when the idea really formed.  
  
It was a cheaper local alternative to the mundane-built equipment they’d used for three years, with some added integration between the smartgun and helmet targeting software borrowed from the Stingray project.  
  
The idea she had was as devious as it was simple. Sell the equipment on the open market, ideally to people who’d trained using the very same equipment. Why buy Whistler, when you can buy what you’ve been trained on and are familiar with? Just a suggestion.  
  
And she knew how much of a pain it’d been outfitting Survival Shot alone with the prototypes - even with the backing of the new carbon process the catgirls had, it’d been a full-time job.  
  
And that right there was the crux of it.  
  
Did she continue to limit herself by just working at it as just a hobby, or did she actually try to go for it as a working business? Which might even mean hiring an apprentice.  
  
It was exciting.  
  
Another step up the ladder  
  
Here I am mom, did you ever think I’d make it all the way out here, without a college education and half a million dollars in debt?  
  
There was a note of smug pride in the idea, a little twang of ‘I told you so’ that brought a self-satisfied smile to her face. And under it all, the soft desire just to see her once more and have her say yes, you did make it.  
  
But she doubted that’d happen. Janet Carlson was born from the generation that equated success in life with a comfortable suburban house. So much so that when dad left, she’d worked two jobs just to keep it. And it was because she’d fought so hard just to keep it, that she’d wanted her daughter to have the same success.  
  
Well, she had a house now - sort of. It creaked in the sun as wooden boards began to absorb the radiant heat. It was ancient, soaked in ‘wave when the whole garden was lifted as Unreal Estate and now in desperate need of an interior renovation. The bathroom alone was well over a decade old - with some of the cool white tiles cracked by her partner’s feet..  
  
It was all well worn, but still clean and rot free. Kept in stasis by the wave, she guessed. She finished cleaning her teeth, taking a moment just to look at her reflection in the mirror. She still looked to be not a day over nineteen. She was 34. Not that anyone could tell. Almost half her life had been spent in Space.  
  
Kept in a sort of stasis by the wave, she guessed. She hadn’t noticed when it’d happened - it might’ve been leeched from the prosthetics. It might’ve been contamination from greasy fingers on a sandwich. Silent biomods were by far and away the most common.  
  
She’d changed a lot, in spite of appearances. For most people she knew, it seemed to be the other way around. They aged, but somehow remained the same.  
  
She finished what she was doing, spritzed herself with an almost-empty can of deoderant and padded her way back through the open door to the bedroom. Sunlight swept in through tan curtains, filing the whole room with a soft orange glow.  
  
It was lightly furnished - little more than a bed, a desk with mirror, various half-empty bookshelves and wardrobes, and a naked puppet-body sitting upright in the bed, staring at her with glass eyes. It was still booting up  
  
“Mornin’ Jet,” she said. Its eyes fixed on her. The expression on its face remained impassive.  
  
The puppet took a few moments to check itself over while Ford dressed herself. Ford took special care to hide the join between skin and metal with her underwear.  
  
“Morning,”  
  
She turned around to see life filling the body sitting on the bed. It stretched out it’s arms to its side, revealing a figure created to mathematically defined proportions. Ford started to dress herself while the puppet stretched in front of the window.  
  
“Hey Jet?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
The puppet still was facing out the window. Shed started to run through a few langourous exercises as Ford slipped into her favourite jeans. The belt-buckle clinked against the metal of her leg. Best to just come straight out with it.  
  
“I’m going to go full-time with Ford’s Heavyarms. I think I’ve got a chance at really making it a big thing. I’ve got all this interest and the only thing stopping me is that I don’t have the time to do it all.”  
  
There was a single moment. The puppet paused for a moment, half turning her head to face  
  
“That’s great,” said Jet. She wore a small smile on her face,picked out by the sunlight.  
  
Ford stopped what she was doing, dropping the tank-top to the floor.  
  
“All you can say is ‘That’s great’?”  
  
Jet’s brow furrowed gently. “Honestly? Yeah. I mean, I know how much you enjoy doing it. Why?”  
  
Ford exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “I was just expecting more of an argument over.... I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders lazily. The reason why had escaped her mind’s reach.  
  
She clapped her hands against her knees, rubbing her thighs vigorously. “Well, It’s happening in the new year anyway.”  
  
“Survival Shot’s going to need someone to do our maintenance now. You wouldn’t happen to know a company interested in the contract?”  
  
Ford chuckled in her throat. “I’ll have to hire an apprentice or two to meet the workload.”  
  
Jet gave half a laugh.  
  
“The other’s will go ballistic if I charge the going market rate...” said Ford, after a moment’s contemplation.  
  
“Of course, businesses have to pay for electricity, life support, biomass and defence expenses... you know, at usual rates.” The puppet placed a single hand on her hip. “Panzer Kunst-trained guards are rare and expensive to hire.”  
  
“Spoilsport,” Ford huffed, throwing her tank top at her partner. It flopped across Jet’s face, before falling to the ground.  
  
The puppet sighed heavily, crouching down to pick it up. She tossed it languidly back, Ford snatching it out of the air with little difficulty. Ford slipped her arms into it, taking a moment to properly nestle herself into the top.  
  
The sock was digging out its Cyberwear - a type of lingerie where the lace was formed into fractal antenna to boost the string signal. It was also Sylia Stingray’s work-phone when paired with a simple headset.  
  
They both regarded each other for a moment, trading soft smiles and the idea that it might’ve been interesting if this was all they had ever been. Certainly less complicated. Ford enumerated the differences in her personal timeline on her fingers amusing herself for a moment with the idea.  
  
Jet rubbed her hands together, as if washing them. The puppet seemed to be paying attention to something outside the room for a moment, before her attention snapped back inside. She took a moment to scan the room  
  
“Do you remember when life used to be exciting?”  
  
Her voice was quiet, subdued inside the orange light.  
  
For blinked. “Huh. Where did that come from?”  
  
“It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about since the Griffon accident. The last thing I really remember is how much fun it was.”  
  
Her face lit up with excitement.  
  
“It nearly killed you,” stared Ford, placing her hands on the bed.  
  
“Yeah. I know. But when I first got fused, I danced on the turbulence behind jumbo-jets. I raced trains, planes and automobiles and played with fighters. You’ve got to admit, there’s no bigger thrill than being shot at, without being hit.” She clasped her hands together, staring into her shadow crawling slowly across the floor. “But, more and more, just being here feels like I’m a shadow. And then there’s this Senshi thing... ”  
  
Ford pondered for a second. “So leave. Nobody’s forcing you to stay here. You can go back to Mars. We’ll make that work.”  
  
She made it sound like the simplest thing to do.  
  
“And that’s what’s killing me.” Jet answered. “All I can think is that I’ve put far too much effort into getting here.The Knight Sabers, Asagiri, Survival Shot, everyone.... leaving means leaving them.”  
  
She trailed off into her own thoughts.  
  
“You’re not the first person to feel that way.”  
  
“I was nobody, but I was free. To go and do what I pleased. To dance around the world on a whim, just to see something that might be interesting. I was anarchy. I was outside society - outside humanity and it felt great.” The edge of her lips turned up momentarily as she soaked herself in the memory. Her shoulders slowly lowered, her momentary cheer vanishing. “But now, now that I’m somebody, I’m stuck.”  
  
Ford looked away from her for a second, exhaling a long sigh. “It’s the price of society really.” She half turned her head to look at her own reflection in the mirror for a few seconds. Jet was looking at her, the puppet’s eyes waiting. “It’s like, you can take a piston from an engine and leave it hanging in space. It can go anywhere It wants, but it’s effectively useless. It’s just a chunk of steel. But, constrained inside the cylinder bore and fixed by a wrist-pin to a con-rod, it can do work. It can be a part of something more and realise amazing power, reaching speeds and doing things far beyond what it’d be capable of on it’s own.“  
  
The puppet made a show of stretching for the ceiling once more. “At the price of being dragged by around its arse and having its head blasted with flame a hundred times a second.”  
  
Ford chuckled again. “It’s better than drifting in space, Jet.”  
  
\----------  
  
TITANIC was, Anika felt, her crowning achievement. She hadn’t built it originally. She hadn’t designed it either. In a way, nobody designed it- it’d just sort of been assembled together to do what it needed to do as needed.  
  
It’d taken three years to turn it into something recognizable as a coherent system.  
  
It sat behind backlit dials and neon-coloured wireframe terminal-displays, keeping a silent watch on Friggas systems. It ran through almost every computer system on the asteroid, using the unused computing power of each individual discrete system to support itself.  
  
It kept the generators synchronised, adjusting the turbine field governors and steam generator output to regulate the current through each turbogenerator and keep the whole system stable at 60 Hz.  
  
It despatched exocomp drones to those areas needing maintenance, prioritising and scheduling the work as needed according to a train of pre-programmed formulas and metrics. It despatched combat drones and monitored wargames and combatants according to scenarios input using an XML-derived markup language she’d designed. It was a glorified video-game intelligence - mindless beyond the script.  
  
it could run Frigga alone and unsupervised for up to a week without concern. The one thing it couldn’t do was monitor comm’s.  
  
That required intelligence far more than dispatching drones, or following a maintenance schedule. TITANIC was as intelligent as a brick. It was an unthinking machine, following programmed algorithms. Anika knew it had vastly more processing power than she’d ever be capable of deploying. At the same time, she was vastly more intelligent than it’d ever be.  
  
It seemed a strange paradox to her, though she wasn’t quite sure how. They were both computers, of a sort. She thought it’d probably be pretty simple to awaken a mind inside the machine like the vast majority of similar single-digit population settlements, which would happily go about monitoring, maintaining and making life interesting.  
  
But something about the personal horror of being permanently trapped inside an asteroid always made her reconsider. Her body may have limited her mind, but she could go anywhere. As opposed to being unlimited in mind, but stuck in one location while the universe could leave you behind.  
  
She wouldn’t condemn someone to that fate. It sounded like a living hell, for as long as an AI could live. And the idea that people pop into existence inside computers and magically decide that they liked monitoring comm-lines and sewage systems and keeping the little people alive inside stations seemed just a little disturbing.  
  
She’d hated her purpose. She’d hated Flint’s blind insistence that AI’s love the purpose they’re created for. Quietly sighing to herself, she hated the part of her mind that liked to dig her past up.  
  
She paced around, waiting for the cupcakes the in oven to be finished. Another ten minutes, according to the timer. Ten minutes was an eternity when there were things you wanted to do that didn’t involve listening to the emergency band.  
  
She could understand why people normally left things to the happy supervising AI - it was boring as all hell and nobody wanted to be the Californian to an ongoing Titanic.  
  
But the idea that’d taken root in her mind led to a single question.  
  
“Are we just actors, playing the role handwavium casts us in?”  
  
She didn’t ask it - she found it deep in a mailing list - but she was definitely interested in the answer.  
  
Her console beeped. She accessed her mailbox through a simple wireless link, pulling a new message down. Decryption was a challenge, but one she’d mastered. Existential thoughts were forgotten the moment she parsed the message.  
  
She even forgot about the cupcakes in the oven.  
  
Anika emitted a high pitched squeal of joy, running through the half open door announcing to all the exocomps that wouldn’t listen “I got my crow badge. I got my crow badge. I got my crow badge!”  
  
They just hoved past, electronic minds focused solely on completing their assigned tasks. She rounded the corner and came face to face with Daryl and Kotono. Both of them were so much taller than she was - Kotono in her pale-green leotard and pink leg warmers, and Daryl in blue shorts and a white tank-top.  
  
“Oh,”  
  
All three stopped dead in their tracks. Anika looked up. They looked down.  
  
“We heard you coming all down the corridor,” said Daryl, a sly smile crawling across her lips  
  
“Our little cyberpunk finally got her qualification?” questioned Kotono.  
  
“Recognised Specialist in Electronic Warfare.” She said it with pride, daring them to tease her over it.  
  
Kotono grinned at her. “I think congratulations are in order.”  
  
She steeled herself.  
  
“Congratulations Anika,” said Daryl, plainly.  
  
It left the android dumbfounded for a moment as her mind caught up. She parsed for sarcasm and found none.  
  
“We knew you could do it,” added Kotono with an avaricious grin. “Now you can ask for more money from your employers.”  
  
She frowned, feigning self-righteous indignation. “I do this for fun,”  
  
In that moment, she’d found the answer to her earlier question.  
  
Kotono’s grin broadened. She leant down over her, putting her face close to hers. “But isn’t it better to be paid to have fun?”  
  
\-------  
  
Kotono’s apartment was cavernous. The slam of the steel door behind her rang off the concrete walls, bouncing back off the glass windows. Beyond them, the magnificent desolation of Friggas surface and a horizon that was within touching distance.  
  
She stood there for a moment, still cooling down after a long jog, soaking in the cold emptiness of the apartment. It’d been built for a family.  
  
And now it was just herself.  
  
She began to dance to a tune only she could hear, pulling herself back to that one audition that’d changed her life. Her body flowed around the kitchenette, then out in the living area as she let herself get carried away by the memory.  
  
The spotlights were on her, hot and staring, the audience in the gloom beyond watching silently. She could feel the ribbons streaming from behind her wrists as she closed her eyes, letting memories of music flow  
  
She could feel the armour around her body, recalling streaming bullets whizzing past. She danced dressed in steel, pirouetting through a full blown firefight She dodged around a sofa slashing at her with a heat-blade.  
  
She jumped over it, carrying her momentum through the air. A flick of her wrists disarmed the pirate shooting at her, monofilament ribbons slicing effortlessly behind her. It was a dance of death that ended with her landing solidly on two feet with her hand reaching in front of her. She closed her fingers tightly.  
  
Her grip would’ve crushed a skull. It did.  
  
And that one act saved the lives of a journalist and Anika Daini. Then led to the downfall of a nascent authoritarian - and definitely criminal - corporatocratic government that paid mercenaries to raid innocent settlements so they could extort protection money from the inhabitants.  
  
Then there was the commandant selling out merchant marine ships delivering supplies to Tau Ceti. Quincy’s daughter. Anika herself. A half dozen mines and a Serenity Valley hostage situation. And more.  
  
She nestled herself into her couch, soaking in its comforting softness waiting for her heart to finally slow down. Her television sat cold in the corner, sitting up on top of a digital entertainment system containing a program library larger than most networks. One whole wall was filled with shelves containing various ornaments - most of them cheap abstract sculptures she’d picked up over the years, with a few trophies reminding her of her competition days. Her instructor’s certificates and qualifications were proudly framed and displayed, along with a photograph of her self in a shining, sequined dance outfit, hanging in mid air as she was about to land her first competition win.  
  
And finally, a printout of an online article by Maico Tange describing her rescue, then the revelations about the United Belt Alliance.  
  
“I do some good in this world,” she told herself.  
  
The television came on, returning to the program she’d been watching earlier in the day. A simple Kandor-City soap-opera, nothing especially stimulating. A button on the couch called for coffee - brewed automatically to her exact taste and delivered in a steaming cup on an autonomous cart.  
  
The television still echoed in an empty apartment - it was far from perfect moment.  
  
But it was at least comfortable.  
  
\--------  
  
The suit imposed nearly two atmospheres of mechanical pressure on the body. Jet’s puppet felt like it was about to be squeezed up out through the top of neck. It’d taken nearly two hours to make, starting with a naked high-resolution laser-scan, a frigid gel mould for the plumbing connections, then a three dimensional mould onto which the suit was finally printed. After that, it was just a matter of baby oil and an hour’s struggling to get into the thing. And that was before the electroconstrictive material was energised by the battery in the backpack.  
  
They were counting on people not really caring about the discomfort when it came to going faster.  
  
Some harder plastic kept a few things to the imagination. Everything else was plain to see. Even the bellybutton. Gloss plastic had a sheen that served to highlight the artificial muscle tone of the puppet’s body - among other things. Some stiffer sections provided some extra support to the chest, a hard plastic forming armour over the shoulders and setting the metal docking lugs on the backpack. Weight was kept to an absolute minimum.  
  
The simple advantage of using the puppet was that it allowed them to tap the data outputs and convert them into graphs of pressure across the body. Conventional pilot-systems used straps which loaded the most sensitive areas of the body.  
  
The suit spread the load out across the stomach and sternum. They had the data to prove it was more comfortable at 15G.  
  
Now, it was just a matter of taking pictures using a ruggedised Jet-proof camera.  
  
And for that, the puppet excelled. It was the perfect mannequin. It could stick in a pose and stare glass-eyed as necessary. It was little more than a support for the bodysuit, to fill it out and give it volume and show what was involved.  
  
She took four without the helmet, then four with, and another four in a more relaxed pose with the helmet under-arm.  
  
Jet found herself musing on her possible pasts reflected in the puppet-mirror. Instead of stumbling to the shed to confirm what’d happened, what if she’d just gone to bed? Wake up different, wave a car and join the party.  
  
And then what?  
  
Combat pilot during the war? Maybe FESWAT?  
  
Instead of being a respected Martial Artist, Jet Jaguar and the Knight Sabers might’ve been the distaff-counterpart to Rhodes and his Roughriders. Or maybe she could’ve called herself Sylia Stingray.  
  
A popular race-pilot, team owner and racecraft designer. Known for being a little bit risque with flight-suit designs. Find Ford on patrol. Spend life bounty-hunting, racing and going very fast, with very hot nights following.  
  
She tried on a few poses for size, quietly running her fingers across the metal surface of her own body. The puppet mirrored the action, both sensory streams coalescing in the back of her mind.  
  
“Be nice for just one day, wouldn’t it?” the puppet suggested, with a suggestive gleam in her eyes.  
  
None of the overheads of the interface, or the noise all her cybernetic implants still busy working away in the background. She allowed her focus to shift to the puppet, drinking on the sensation of its fingers drawing up her stomach. Her breasts tingled as she stroked them, closing her eyes to savour the feeling. Her mouth emitted a small gasp of surprise, before she slowly lowered her arms to her side, bringing it to a halt before she ever really got it going.  
  
Sock puppet and puppeteer stood staring at each other, reflections without a mirror between them.  
  
“But I’d have to give up too much,” she answered herself, spreading her wings.  
  
The puppet had no mind of its own to respond with. She regarded herself through its eyes, spotting the repaired armour on her arms and legs immediately. And that right there was the price of fun.  
  
“Still not done?”  
  
Both bodies turned to face Daryl, crossing the landing bay while drenched in sweat. She emptied the sports bottle she carried in one single long gulp.  
  
“Just thinking,” both cyber and puppet answered in a chorus.  
  
Daryl winced. “That’s creepy.”  
  
“I know,” they harmonised.  
  
“Oh Grow up.”  
  
Jet caught the thrown towel effortlessly.  
  
“Easier said than done,” she said herself, looking away for a moment as her own thoughts  
  
“Could you forward me the pictures you took? I’ll look at them later.”  
  
“Already sent.” Uploaded from the camera to her onboard storage, then forward on again to Daryl’s public folder a moment after she’d thought about it. She scanned through them as they departed, an idea forming in her mind.  
  
“We could hire a male model to take the same photographs, for the M version, to keep things even?”  
  
“Frigga needs Men!” Daryl announced. Her voice seemed to fill the entire landing bay, echoing away into the distance. She caught the cyber’s expression immediately “If you use that as the title for the advert I’ll kill you.”  
  
“It’ll get attention,” said Jet, wearing an amused smile.  
  
“The wrong kind,” said Daryl, gently shaking her head. She brushed the sweat off her forehead. “I’ll be in the Doll if you need me. CAMS still hasn’t fixed my shower,”  
  
Jet offered her the towel. She took it from the cyber’s hand, dabbing her face with it.  
  
“Yeah. I’ll be at the vote anyway. Laters,”  
  
Daryl crossed the landing bay to the door marked ‘Radioactive’, humming a tune that kept her mind off how much her knees ached.  
  
Jet hovered around the jet, musing on the paradoxes of her life for a moment. She glanced at herself, glancing at the puppet with a blank look on it’s face.  
  
What the fuck do you want me to say?, it seemed to say, I’m you.  
  
\--------  
  
Shinji had an office to himself.  
  
It was sparsly furnished, with a view out over the station ring through a porthole window. The glare of Ultima’s lights outshone the stars beyond - a shame, he thought. He liked that view. He had space for the usual office paper, a few filing cabinets, a work-desk with terminal. And not much else.  
  
He found himself at an utter loss at what to add to the place to define it as his office, and not just a uniform piece of Stellviacorp property He paced around for a few minutes, feeling very small in the uniform of Security Chief. It didn’t help matters that his body hadn’t exactly been built large in the first place.  
  
He sat in behind his desk, hiding his lips behind steepled hands for a few seconds, glaring furiously at the door.  
  
It hissed open.  
  
“Wah! Oh... Shinji.”  
  
Miyuri froze for a moment beneath the force of his father’s gaze.  
  
“I was just trying it on,” he said, a momentary shame drawing a guilty smile across his lips.  
  
“Your eyes are too kind,” she said, covering her mouth to hide a chuckle .“So, is that report I asked you for ready?”  
  
“Unh,” he nodded. “I just followed the format of the ones already on the server. Hopefully it’s right,”  
  
“Send it to my email - securely. Forward a copy to HQ too while you’re at it.”  
  
His expression went momentarily blank as his mind reached out onto the network. “Done,” he said.  
  
Miyuri blinked, her mind taking a moment to catch up. “I keep forgetting you can do that.”  
  
He held his right arm up, showing the wristband Anika had given him. “Handy thing.”  
  
“You really need to decorate this place more, make it your own.”  
  
“I was thinking the same thing. But... that’s pretty hard.”  
  
“Consider it an order. Station moral is important, after all. And people are happier in more personable offices - especially so far out here. Make this office Shinji’s”  
  
“Easier said than done.”  
  
“Well, you could start with a picture of Yuu...”  
  
“Me?” He pointed a single digit as his chest.  
  
Miyuri rolled her eyes at the joke. She’d heard it uncountable times before. “There’s nobody on the station who doesn’t know the real reason why you applied to be Security Chief out here. And it’s not because you thought the notice said Chef.”  
  
“Well.....” He pondered for a few moments, choosing his answer carefully. “We like to keep it quiet. Because of Agatha.”  
  
That was one reason, anyway. Not the main reason, but a convenient one.  
  
“We’re Stellvia, we look after our own. We protect our own.”  
  
“Thanks.”   
  
The discomfort was almost instinctive. It filled him up inside and made him squirm in his shoes.  
  
“So. Get to work making this Shinji’s office.”  
  
“I’ll try.” That was the best he could do.  
  
The door closed behind her, leaving him alone in the room.  
  
How do you make something your own, when you aren’t even sure exactly who you are? He stopped that thought right there. That wasn’t exactly true - he had a very good idea who he was, separate from everyone’s expectation of who Shinji Ikari was supposed to be.  
  
On one level, he was a teenager who was now the Chief of Security on a space-station.  
  
On another, he had the speeding fines from KCPD to prove he was a different person. Arguably, applying for the first job on Ultima that came up without even thinking about it proved his parentage. He always felt that difference - a subtle awareness that he came from a different origin than the others.  
  
Maybe that’s why he got on so well with Yuu.  
  
He was welcomed into the group, but could never quite shake the feeling of being an outsider. It crawled over his skin and clung to him as tightly as his uniform.It occurred to him to talk about it, and people would probably still feel very kind and nod and act concerned. Ultimately, he was sure he was just being selfish on some level. He couldn’t ask for more than he’d been given.  
  
It might’ve been a little seed of distrust planted by his job ‘interview’ - as much as he understood the necessity, he still hated the dishonesty of it.  
  
It might just have been what a colleague had called in-law syndrome, when talking about marriage.  
  
The momentary idea of himself in a tux’ and Yuu in a full bridegown had him laughing heartily on his own.  
  
Not that they’d ever have a wedding. There was always the long shadow of Yuu’s origins. And as much, he thought, as he knew there were people quite willing and capable of making Clay pay if she ever brought them trouble - and who’d do so with terrible passion - they’d both agreed that neither of them ever wanted to risk so much violence being unleashed on their behalf.  
  
He sat back down in the chef’s chair, feeling just a little warm in a way nobody else would understand. He was smiling to himself.  
  
That was when he’d known she was the one.  
  
\--------  
  
The Grey Room was normally used to impress Survival Shot customers, while giving them the full briefing. It had a full array of weaponry in glass cases on the walls - machine guns, assault rifles, pistols, even a Shatter-15M Diamond Bazooka which sparkled in the light.  
  
One wall was given over completely to a projector display, showing a green-0wireframe map of Frigga’s known tunnels. Yellow dots highlighted exocomps buzzing about their business, each one labelled with  
  
Anika switched it over a moment later to display to full text of the negotiated agreement, so they could all read it once more. Jet stood with her back to the screen, eyes staring at the weapons on the wall opposite. Ford sat opposite her in her usual seat, a data-terminal placed on the table in front of her. Daryl was in her old city-guard uniform, sitting at the head of the table. Kotono had dressed up for the occasion, taking her own seat opposite Ford  
  
Shinji was present via telnet, and Mackie’d phone his vote in a long time ago.  
  
The screen switched over a moment later, showing the final result.  
  
“That’s 5 to 2, in favour of accepting the deal,” Anika reported, sighing gently.  
  
Daryl smiled, settling back into her chair, satisfied that her work had been done. Kotono rapidly rubbed her hands together with glee.  
  
“That’s that,” said Ford.  
  
Jet covered the marking on her right shoulder with her left hand, looking faintly troubled for a moment. Her eyes scanned around the room for a moment, trying to put faces to the results.  
  
She left a heartbeat later, door closing lazily behind her.  
  
\--------  
  
Spirit. Freedom. Sword. Scabbard. Gun. Dream.  
  
Repeat as necessary. It’s a relief from the monotony, a form of meditation that forced her mind to focus in on itself. She could feel herself flow around the training room, dancing in imagined combat against an enemy just as skilled as she was.  
  
It was a dance of death. When unleashed on the unprepared, it was lethal. It was brutal. It was bloody.  
  
It was a dance of peace. It brought peace to her mind, quieting her troubles under the mortal demands on the now. Energy flowed through her body, rising from her mind, driving powercores, through thrumming circuits, to fizzing actuators right out to the tips of her fingers.  
  
It pulsed in time with her hearbeat, her whole body synchronised into one whole cybernetic being. Digital. Mechanical. Biological. Three parts into one whole being.  
  
“You left in a hurry,”  
  
She threw a glance towards the doorway. Ford was standing there with a single hand propping herself up against the frame.  
  
Jet didn’t even miss a beat. She flowed through one form, into another. “You come to call me childish?”  
  
“Nah, just to tell you that the official application’s gone forward. The Parliament will give it their approval, and we all officially become action girls. Then the first groups start arriving.”  
  
Jet stopped, standing dead still as she considered. The cyber heaved a sigh - making a point of doing it.  
  
“It’s just a strange paradox. It’s everything I need in life and I hate it.”  
  
For shrugged her shoulders “Hey, that’s life. I don’t like the idea of giving some people I don’t know a piece of myself either. But it’s better for us all.”  
  
Jet looked at her. “Better than the Alternative.”  
  
Ford grimaced. “This is just better. It will be.”  
  
The cocked her head to the side a little to face Ford. “I’m being dragged around by my arse by the engine of society.”   
  
“Want me to set your head on fire?”  
  
Jet gave an amused snort. “What’d I do to deserve you?”  
  
“I ask myself the same question, every day,” answered Ford, wearing a rueful grin. “But here we are.”  
  
Jet stood in the centre of the room,arms hanging loosely by her side. Ford was still standing in the doorway. The cyber seemed to be considering just running across and hugging her crushingly tight. She settled for a warm smile.  
  
“Here we are,” she said.  
  
\---------


End file.
